Excelsior Diamond, the second largest rough diamond of gem quality ever found, is discovered at the Jagersfontein Mine in South Africa

June 30, 1894

Tower Bridge, a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London which crosses the River Thames, is opened

June 30, 1908

The Tunguska event near Tunguska River in central Siberia, Russia, later conjectured to be a meteorite strike, explodes 5-10 km above the forest and devastates thousands of square kilometers of Siberia

June 30, 1923

New Zealand claims Ross Dependency in Antarctica

June 30, 1960

Belgian Congo gains independence from Belgium as Republic of the Congo, triggering Congo Crisis, a conflict between nationalist faction under Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and leader of country Mobutu Sese Seko

June 30, 1963

Cardinal Montini elected Pope Paul VI, 262nd head of Roman Catholic Church

June 30, 1971

Three cosmonauts die as Soyuz 11 depressurizes during reentry

June 30, 1997

Collapse of the currency of Thailand sparks the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis

June 30, 2002

Brazil national football team wins its fifth championship at the FIFA World Cup, held in South Korea and Japan

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Saint Peter, an early Christian leader and one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, is crucified upside down at his own request, since he saw himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus Christ, according to Christian tradition

June 29, 1236

Ferdinand III of Castile conquers Cordoba, the old Umayyad capital in Spain

June 29, 1440

Italian League led by the Republic of Florence beat the Milanese in the Battle of Anghiari

June 29, 1504

Diego Mendez, one of Columbus's captains, returned to Jamaica with a small caravel and rescued the Columbus expedition, that stumbled across the Cayman Islands

The new king of Tahiti, pushed by the governor Henri Isidore Chessé, abdicate in favor of France

June 29, 1881

Muhammad Ahmad, a religious leader of the Samaniyya order, proclaims himself as the Mahdi or messianic redeemer of the Islamic faith in Sudan and leads a successful military campaign against the Turco-Egyptian government of the Sudan

June 29, 1888

Professor Frederick Treves performs the first appendectomy, the surgical removal of the vermiform appendix, in England

June 29, 1913

Second Balkan War begins, when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacks its former allies, Serbia and Greece

June 29, 1916

Boeing Model 1, the first Boeing aircraft, flies for first time

June 29, 1921

Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly called Nazi Party, as hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic begins

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Peter Paul Rubens, a Flemish painter, is born in Germany, in family of protestants exiled from Antwerp

June 28, 1635

The French colony of Guadeloupe is established in the Caribbean

June 28, 1650

Lord Cromwell set off for Scotland at the head of an army of 16,354 men

June 28, 1675

Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, crushes the Swedes, who invaded and occupied parts of Brandenburg, at Fehrbellin

June 28, 1745

American New Englanders capture France's most imposing North American stronghold on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia

June 28, 1758

British colonel James Wolfe issues the Wolfe's Manifesto for psychological intimidation of French forces

June 28, 1776

Colonists repulse a British sea attack on Charleston, South Carolina

June 28, 1838

Britain's Queen Victoria is crowned in Westminster Abbey

June 28, 1914

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, triggering World War I

June 28, 1919

The Treaty of Versailles, signed by Germany and the Allied Powers, blames Germany for World War I, establishes the Weimar Republic, redraws European borders, and creates a League of Nations

June 28, 1935

United States President Franklin Roosevelt orders the construction of a gold vault at Fort Knox, Kentucky

June 28, 1941

U.S. President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8807, which creates the Office of Scientific Research and Development

June 28, 1969

Stonewall riots, a spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid, marks start of the gay liberation movement

June 28, 1978

Seasat, the first Earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the Earth's oceans, is launched by NASA

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba, invade Portugal to put it under Spain's rule, ending the struggle for the throne of Portugal after the death of young King Sebastian I

June 27, 1693

The first woman's magazine "The Ladies' Mercury" published in London

June 27, 1743

King George of the English defeat the French at Dettingen, Bavaria during War of the Austrian Succession

June 27, 1806

Buenos Aires is captured by British

June 27, 1839

African slaves, kidnapped in Sierra Leone and sold into slavery in Cuba, revolt on the board of the Spanish coasting vessel La Amistad, transferring them from Cuba to Porta Prince as a load, then kill the captain, and order the crew back to Africa

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Roman Emperor Julian receives a mortal wound in battle with the Sassanian Persians during battle of Samarra. Jovian succeeds

June 26, 1541

Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of Peru, is murdered by his former followers in Lima

June 26, 1630

Sweden enters the German wars, as King Gustavus Adolphus and 13,000 men, comprised of mostly Swedes, with some Scottish and Irish mercenaries, land on the island of Usedom off the Pomeranian coast after Imperial intervention in Poland

June 26, 1721

Dr. Zabdiel Boylston gives the first smallpox inoculation in Boston during the epidemic that has arrived by ship from Barbados

June 26, 1794

French defeat the Coalition Army at the Battle of Fleurus

June 26, 1830

Britainэs King George IV dies and is succeeded by his brother, King William IV

June 26, 1894

The American Railway Union with 125,000 workers, led by Eugene V. Debs, calls a general strike in sympathy with Pullman workers that blocked freight traffic in and out of Chicago

June 26, 1909

The Science Museum in London comes into existence as an independent entity

June 26, 1924

After eight years of occupation, United States troops leave the Dominican Republic

June 26, 1936

The Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter, flies for the first time in Germany

June 26, 1945

United Nations Charter, the foundational treaty of the United Nations, is signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, California, United States

June 26, 1948

U.S. and British pilots begin delivering food and supplies by airplane to West Berlin after the city is isolated by a Soviet Union blockade

June 26, 1963

USA President John F. Kennedy speaks the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner", which means I am a Berliner, on a visit to West Berlin

June 26, 1974

The Universal Product Code, a barcode symbology, is scanned for the first time, to sell a pack of chewing gum in Ohio

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first novel about a young wizard Harry Potter by British author J. K. Rowling, is released

June 26, 2000

A 'rough draft' of the genome, as part of the Human Genome Project, an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, is finished

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Forces of Burgundian Kingdom beat the Frankish army at Battle of Vézeronce averting expansion of Merovingians

June 25, 841

Charles the Bald and Louis the German, two grandsons of Charlemagne, defeat third grandson Lothair I at Battle of Fontenoy during Carolingian Civil War

June 25, 1530

Augsburg Confession, the 28 articles of the Lutheran churches, are presented to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as an attempt to restore religious and political unity in the Holy Roman Empire

June 25, 1630

The fork is introduced to American dining by John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

June 25, 1767

The Jesuits are expelled from Spanish America, and their work is taken over by the Dominican Fathers

June 25, 1850

Lord Palmerston, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, claims that every British subject in the world should be protected by the British Empire and calls to to blockade Greece after a mob in Athens burned down the home of a British citizen

June 25, 1876

Alliance of native American forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the United States Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana's Little Bighorn River

June 25, 1947

The Diary of a Young Girl, a book written by Jewish girl Anne Frank during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, is published

June 25, 1950

Korean War, a war between North and South Korea, begins after Korean People's Army assisted by the Soviet Union cross the 38th parallel and invade South Korea

June 25, 1975

Mozambique gains independence after over four centuries of Portuguese rule

June 25, 1991

Slovenia and Croatia declare independence from Yugoslavia

June 25, 2009

Michael Jackson, an American singer-songwriter often referred to as the "King of Pop", dies of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication after suffering from cardiac arrest

450,000 men of the Grande Armée of Napoleon crosses the Nieman River and begins invasion of Russia, resulting in catastrophic defeat for Franch

June 24, 1821

Simón Bolívar defeat the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre at Battle of Carabobo outside of Caracas

June 24, 1859

At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army led by Napoleon III defeat the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I in northern Italy during Second Italian War of Independence

June 24, 1932

Bloodless revolution ends absolute monarchy in Thailand

June 24, 1993

Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician, wins worldwide fame after presenting his solution for Fermat's Last Theorem, a problem that has been unsolved for more than three centuries

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Carthage is defeated by Roman armies led by the consuls Marcus Livius and Gaius Claudius Nero in the Battle of the Metaurus, while Carthaginian general Hasdrubal is killed, which becomes key battle in the Second Punic War

June 23, 1606

Treaty of Vienna ends anti-Habsburg uprising in Royal Hungary

June 23, 1757

Forces of the East India Company led by Robert Clive defeat Indians in Battle of Plassey marking the beginning of formal British rule in India after years of commercial activity

June 23, 1758

British and Hanoverian armies defeat the French at Krefeld in Germany

June 23, 1775

First regatta is hold on Thames, England

June 23, 1845

The congress of the Republic of Texas vote to accept annexation by the US after 10 years as an independent republic

June 23, 1848

A bloody insurrection of workers in Paris, later ruthlessly suppressed by General Cavaignac, erupts to protest inflation, unemployment and corruption

June 23, 1865

Confederate General Stand Watie, who was also a Cherokee chief, surrenders the last sizable Confederate army at Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory

June 23, 1894

The International Olympic Committee is created by French Baron Pierre de Coubertin with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president

June 23, 1938

Marineland, the world's first oceanarium, opens in Florida, United States

June 23, 1956

Gamal Abdel Nasser is elected president of Egypt and new constitution of Egypt is accepted at referendum

June 23, 1960

Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, approve Enovid, the first combined oral contraceptive pill, for contraceptive use

June 23, 2010

Marina Bay Sands, a casino-based vacation resort, is officially opened in Singapore and becomes the 2nd most expensive building in the world

In France a scientific congress adopts the length of the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance along the surface of the Earth from its equator to its pole, in a curved line of latitude passing through the center of Paris

June 22, 1815

Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates a second time, in favour of his son, Napoléon Francis Joseph Charles Bonaparte

June 22, 1816

An English statute establishes a single gold standard for money, with silver coins reduced to status of tokens of limited legal tender

June 22, 1847

The first doughnut with a hole in it is created in United States

June 22, 1874

Doctor Andrew Taylor Still of Macon, Missouri, founds osteopathy, a type of alternative medicine, that claims that the wellbeing of an individual depends on their bones, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue functioning smoothly together

June 22, 1922

The Irish Civil War begins between Irish republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State

June 22, 1922

Pius XI becomes Pope

June 22, 1940

After German blitz France formally surrenders at the signing ceremony, held in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918

June 22, 1941

Over 4 million soldiers of the Axis powers invade the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in human history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II

June 22, 1944

Soviet forces, comprised of about 1.2 million men, 2715 tanks, and 5327 aircraft, launch Operation Bagration on German Army Group Centre to clear German forces from the Belorussian SSR and eastern Poland

June 22, 1945

Okinawa, Japan, is declared captured by the Allies with total US casualties about 80,000 and 120,000 Japanese

June 22, 1978

Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by James Christy

June 22, 1992

Two skeletons excavated in Yekaterinburg are identified as Czar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Roman army is ambushed and destroyed by Hannibal's army, numbering around 55,000 troops, at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, which becomes the largest ambush in military history

June 21, 1377

Edward III, King of England, dies

June 21, 1547

The great fire in Moscow destroys sections of Moscow which had been built almost entirely of wood including some building in the Kremlin

June 21, 1607

The Church of England Episcopal Church, the first Protestant Episcopal parish in America, is established at Jamestown

June 21, 1661

Sweden signs the Treaty of Cardis, in which Russia agrees to return to Sweden areas it had conquered in the Baltic lands

June 21, 1675

Sir Christopher Wren begins to rebuild St Paul's Cathedral in London, replacing the old building which has been destroyed by the Great fire

June 21, 1749

English transport ships land 2576 colonists on what is now Nova Scotia to establish a British military base, naming the town Halifax

June 21, 1788

New Hampshire ratifies the United States Constitution as the ninth state, and by the terms of Article VII it is in effect

June 21, 1834

Obed Hussey, an American inventor, patents mechanical reaping machine

June 21, 1887

Britain celebrates the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria

June 21, 1893

George Washington Gale Ferris, engineer, completes the construction of a 77-meter high revolving steel wheel with 38 passenger cars, each with 40 plush chairs, for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the first Ferris wheel

June 21, 1897

In Austria a giant Ferris wheel, designed by Walter Bassett of England, is opened in Vienna to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the accession of Emperor Franz Joseph to the Habsburg throne

June 22, 1940

After German blitz France formally surrenders at the signing ceremony, held in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918

June 21, 1948

In a lab in Manchester, England, the Small Scale Experimental Machine computer, nicknamed "Baby" is created, the first to contain memory (128 bytes) which could store a program

June 21, 1985

It is confirmed by American, German, and Brazilian forensic pathologists that the body exhumed in Brazil on June 6 is, indeed, that of the German physician in Auschwitz concentration camp, Josef Mengele

Monday, June 19, 2017

Combined Roman and Visigoth forces under Roman general Flavius Aetius stop Attila's army at the Catalaunian Plains in eastern France, the last great military campaign by Western Roman Empire

June 20, 656

Caliph Uthman ibn Affan is assassinated, thus Ali becomes caliph

June 20, 840

King of the Franks Louis the Pious dies triggering the Civil war in Frankish kingdom between his sons

June 20, 1646

In England, Parliament signs a peace treaty with Royalists

June 20, 1675

A band of Pokanoket retaliate for the execution of three of their people and attack several isolated homesteads in the small Plymouth colony settlement of Swansea, starting King Philip's War

June 20, 1743

The British warship Centurion under Commodore George Anson engaged and overcame the Spanish treasure galleon, Nuestra Senora de Covadonga, near the Philippines killing 58 Spaniards and capturing over 1 million Spanish silver dollars and 500 pounds of native silver

June 20, 1756

In India rebels defeat the British army at Calcutta and imprison between 64 and 146 British soldiers in a suffocating cell that gained notoriety as the Black Hole of Calcutta

June 20, 1789

Oath on the Tennis Court in Versailles, France, bonds members of the Third Estate to resist eviction until they have a new constitution

June 20, 1791

King Louis XVI is caught trying to escape French Revolution in the so-called Flight to Varennes

June 20, 1793

Eli Whitney, an American inventor, petitions patent for a cotton gin, a machine which cleans the tight-clinging seeds from short-staple cotton, which becomes one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution

June 20, 1819

The paddle-wheel steamship Savannah arrives in Liverpool, England, after a voyage of 27 days and 11 hours and becomes the first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic

June 20, 1837

Queen Victoria ascends the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV, and beginning the Victorian era when the British Empire get the apex

A jury in New Bedford, Massachusetts, finds Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of her father, wealthy Fall River, Massachusetts, businessman Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby Borden, however, is ostracized for the rest of her life

June 20, 1948

West German Finance Minister Ludwig Erhard eliminates most price controls and introduces a new currency, the "Deutsche mark"

June 20, 1960

Federation of Mali, with Senegal, becomes independent of France

June 20, 1990

The asteroid Eureka, the first Mars trojan, is discovered by David H. Levy

June 20, 1991

The Bundestag in Bonn decides that Berlin should become the German capital

June 20, 2003

The North East MRT Line, the world's first fully automated and driverless subway opens in Singapore

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Taking advantage from Byzantine-Arab Wars, Vikings from Rus' Khaganate on 200 vessels attack and lay siege of the city of Constantinople

June 18, 1152

Friedrich I Barbarossa is crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Adrian IV in Rome

June 18, 1178

In Canterbury, five men observe explosions on the Moon, likely the origin of lunar crater Giordano Bruno

June 18, 1429

French forces under Joan of Arc defeat the main British army at the battle of Patay

June 18, 1643

In England the battle of Chalgrove Field during the English Civil War ends with a minor Royalist victory

June 18, 1685

Monmouth Rebellion, an attempt to overthrow James II, begins in England

June 18, 1757

Austrian army beat Prussia at the Battle of Kolín, Bohemia

June 18, 1812

War of 1812 begins as United States declares war against Britain

June 18, 1815

Emperor of the French Napoleon, who escaped from exile in island of Elba, is defeated by British commander Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, which brings a conclusion to the Napoleonic Wars and marks the beginning of a Pax Britannica

June 18, 1935

England and Germany sign a naval treaty, limiting the German surface fleet to 35 percent of British tonnage, and submarine fleet to 45 percent

June 18, 1948

Long Play, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is introduced by Columbia Records and becomes a new standard by the record industry

June 18, 1979

Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II agreement in Vienna

June 18, 1982

Argentine military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri resigns, in the wake of his country's defeat in the Falklands War

June 18, 1983

Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space

June 18, 1989

Solidarity, a Polish non–communist party-controlled trade union, wins landslide victory over the Communist Party in first free elections in Poland, beginning Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and collapse of the Soviet Bloc in Europe

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Oliver Cromwell's army routes the King's army at Naseby, which markd the decisive turning point in the English Civil War

June 14, 1649

Jesuits set fire to Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in North America, abandoning the settlement created in 1639, due to Iroquois on the warpath against them

June 14, 1667

The Dutch fleet burn 3 ships and capture the English flagship near the River Medway during the Second Anglo-Dutch War

June 14, 1755

In England the first edition of Samuel Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language", which has 42,773 entries, is published

June 14, 1777

The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopts the Stars and Stripes, created by Betsy Ross, as the national flag

June 14, 1789

Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty arrives in Timor in a small boat

June 14, 1800

French General Napoleon Bonaparte pushes the forces of Austria out of Italy in the Battle of Marengo

June 14, 1822

Charles Babbage, a young Cambridge mathematician, announces the invention of a machine capable of performing simple arithmetic calculations, which could perform up to 60 error-free calculation in 5 minutes, to the Astronomical Society

June 14, 1834

A process for making sandpaper is patented by Isaac Fischer, Springfield, Vermont

June 14, 1846

Americans in Northern California rebel against Mexican authorities in what is called the Bear Flag Revolt and proclaim the Republic of California

June 14, 1866

Prussia attacks Austria after disagreements over the administration of Schleswig-Holstein, starting Austro-Prussian War

June 14, 1923

Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski is brutally tortured and killed during a military coup